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Gene Editing and Seed Stealing

In the last few decades, great strides have been made in regulating the movement of genetic material across countries. But, with the advent of advanced gene-editing techniques, this progress could be lost, to the detriment of the Convention on Biological Diversity – and those it was created to protect.

AUSTIN, TEXAS – Four hundred years ago, John Rolfe used tobacco seeds pilfered from the West Indies to develop Virginia’s first profitable export, undermining the tobacco trade of Spain’s Caribbean colonies. More than 200 years later, another Briton, Henry Wickham, took seeds for a rubber-bearing tree from Brazil to Asia – via that great colonialist institution, London’s Royal Botanic Gardens – thereby setting the stage for the eventual demise of the Amazonian rubber boom.

At a time of unregulated plant exports, all it took was a suitcase full of seeds to damage livelihoods and even entire economies. Thanks to advances in genetics, it may soon take even less.

To be sure, over the last few decades, great strides have been made in regulating the deliberate movement of the genetic material of animals, plants, and other living things across borders. The 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, in particular, has helped to safeguard the rights of providers of genetic resources – such as (ideally) the farmers and indigenous people who have protected and nurtured valuable genes – by enshrining national sovereignty over biodiversity.

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You cannot have national sovereignty over the air we breath, the water in oceans, the sun, the moon, or the genes in the plants and animals for that matter. The very concept of stealing them is ludicrous. Imagine I was to prove that the genes of Director Ling and Director Hammond were stolen from my country - they would then be legally speaking stolen property of mine and I could seek their value in damages from their host nations. The very concept lies contrary to what I, for one, might consider to be the reals of common sense.

No doubt the grey suits and white coats will regardless work hard to make it illegal to share what God (or the Primordial Soup if you prefer) gave us. I hope there is strong public resistance to this, like we saw with GM products in Europe.

By the time they assemble a framework to benefit the little man or at least all mankind it will be to late as it will all be pilfered. Making it retrospective needs to be incorporated into the discussion but then that would stall the talks even further. With unfettered globalisation and finance dominating the world it would be too much to think that this will end well now or in the near future.....